The line does get blurry at times. In the past I've been told to remove someone's account right away because they are being terminated and then afterwards been

The line does get blurry at times. In the past I've been told to remove someone's account right away because they are being terminated and then afterwards been told "nevermind, we're firing them next week. Undo everything and make sure that you convince them it was just some computer issue". To add to it they didn't tell me about it until the user had already noticed they couldn't log into their account. I agree with what you're saying about withholding information being different than lying but there are circumstances where you will need to flat out lie and fabricate a story to effectively withhold that information. In my case I had to pretend that it must have been a stuck key or something while I quickly reverted the changes and walked them through turning off the computer and pressing all of the keys a lot to "fix" it. It's one thing to not tell anyone what a meeting between management is about but if you're telling people that you're in a meeting about "Regulatory compliance auditing" while planning a layoff that's not just withholding information. I'm not saying it isn't justified but a lie is still a lie.